These days you can't turn around in bookshops for all the gloriously-produced food books struggling to establish some sort of niche for themselves - from native-south-west-Indian-cuisine, to fully-balanced-meals-in-two-and-three-quarter-minutes, to colour-themed-food, and lots and lots of foodie books based on some TV cooking programme or other.
The latest cookbook on the market also has a TV hook - although Ballykissangel has never had a discernible connection with food as far as I've noticed. The popular, gently comic series is set in Oireland, land of cute villages full of characters, clean rivers and rolling fields - not the Ireland of polluted waterways, littered countryside, angel-dusted beasts and genetic engineering operations.
The Ballykissangel Cookbook, full of "inspirational Irish recipes from Ballykissangel country" (directions: head south after Bray) is a collection of traditional and modern Irish recipes seeking to capitalise on the popular BBC series set in the mythical village. Well, they do eat in Ballykay, and they are surrounded by farmland, so um, why not a cookbook of Ballykay recipes? After that we could take a look at EastEnder Delights, featuring whelks, jellied eels and greasy fry-ups; Morse Mouthfuls with cream teas and cucumber sandwiches; Prisoner Cell Block H Delicacies with recipes for tasty gruel, and porridge of course; The X-Files Mysterious Tastes ("just what is in that burger?") or ER Quick Bites - how about a lightly sauteed kidney between emergencies (sorry, that was tasteless; well actually it was quite a delicate flavour . . .) This is not an unprecedented phenomenon - some years ago there was a Coronation Street book of recipes for Betty's hot pot, and recently there was an Archers cookbook (close your eyes, don't look, just taste).
Ballykissangel here is a peg for a nicely-produced book of recipes using native food by Aidan Dempsey from the Old Coach House restaurant outside Avoca - the real heart of "Ballykissangel country". Aidan and Susan Dempsey and their children have all been extras in Ballykay, and have catered and organised parties for the unit, so there is some connection with the series. In keeping with the folksy setting, Dempsey has written a personal introduction to each of the sections - the book is divided not into starters, meat dishes, vegetables, or whatever, but into the sources for the food: From The Mountains, From The Valleys, Rivers, Fields And Pastures, Farms, Coastlines and so on. This seems entirely suitable for the endeavour - although for a good proportion of people in Ballykissangel/Avoca or similar villages "From The Supermarket" might be more accurate.
These introductions paint an idyllic picture of Irish village and rural life (at least some of which must be close to accurate!), where children collect eggs and adults forage in the hedgerows for the makings of dinner. Dempsey personalises it with mentions of his grandfather's pickled beef and his mother's admonitions about telling lies (and your tongue being cut out for non-lying children's sandwiches - this precedes a recipe for Lying Tongue with Sherry Gravy). He also manages to drag in some reference to a Ballykay plotline for each section: "The most popular fish [in Wicklow] is the little local brown trout . . . In Ballykissangel schoolmaster Brendan Kearney regularly fishes the river Angel for its succulent little trout") and the book is peppered with - curiously uncaptioned - stills from the series, as opposed to carrying more pictures of the dishes. This is what they eat down Ballykay way when they're not propping up Assumpta Fitzgerald's bar or up to some shennanigans with Brian Quigley.
Aside from its vaguely corny TV peg, this is a nice introduction to Irish food - Dempsey's take on cooking with the best of fresh, locally available ingredients. Some are basic - poached eggs on toasted soda bread, roast rib of beef - and others more elaborate: venison steak with sweetened berries; wild duck poached in red wine; morels with sherry and cream (Aidan Dempsey has morels in his garden and picks them in the forests - which is rare news for mycologists among us); and even pike baked in newspaper (The Irish Times is one of those recommended).
And suitably enough for a series in which one of the main characters is a priest, one of the sections is called From The Churches - no, not sprinkling holy water on food before cooking, but dishes including Curate's Casserole and P.P. Porridge.
The Ballykissangel Cookbook by Aidan Dempsey is published by Headline (£14.99 hardback)